Re: hard lock using combination of devices

From: Carl Thompson
Date: Tue Feb 17 2004 - 19:39:42 EST


At the moment I am. But I also tried native Linux drivers too with the same
result. I've tried Windows drivers under DriverLoader and ndiswrapper as well
as the native Aetheros driver, the native ADMTek driver and another native
driver the name of which escapes me right now. It's definitely not a driver
problem because I've tried several with the same results.

BTW, Driverloader is actually a very slick package. For 802.11a/g parts, it
definitely seems to be the way to go if stability is an issue. While it is a
commercial product it's worth the $20US if you use high-speed wireless cards.
Ndiswrapper is also nice but it is not as complete as DriverLoader currently
and does not work with many cards. As for the Windows NDIS drivers that are
run with them, they actually tend to be very stable and I have no problem with
running them from a "purity" standpoint. I believe in doing what works, and
right now nothing is working with Linux.

The native drivers are in various states but all have problems which make them
undesirable. The Aetheros driver is best of the bunch, though.

Thanks,
Carl Thompson

Quoting Pavel Machek <pavel@xxxxxxx>:

Hi!

>>> Your box share IRQs in a big way :)
>>
>>Your point?
>
>While shared interrupts can in theory work right,
>lots of hardware and/or drivers do not handle
>that.

First, the two devices in question are not on the same interrupt. Second, it
is very difficult in this day in age to build a system without interrupt
sharing. While I agree that it's better to have as few devices sharing as
possible, there are simply too many devices in modern systems and too few
interrupts. Interrupt sharing needs to work on modern hardware and needs to
work in Linux. This notebook is pretty typical in its interrupt distribution

CPU0 0: 41027968 XT-PIC timer
1: 26061 XT-PIC i8042
2: 0 XT-PIC cascade
8: 1 XT-PIC rtc
9: 2020 XT-PIC acpi
10: 2187181 XT-PIC yenta, driverloader
11: 111 XT-PIC ALI 5451
12: 2399118 XT-PIC i8042
14: 169829 XT-PIC ide0
15: 1 XT-PIC ide1
NMI: 0 LOC: 41036749 ERR: 275764
MIS: 0

Does that mean you are actually using windows driver for your wireless
card? At that point ... no wonder it breaks ;-).
Pavel
--
When do you have a heart between your knees?
[Johanka's followup: and *two* hearts?]



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